The U.S. Department of Defense on Thursday backed off plans for a large-scale test of a voting system designed to let Americans who are overseas cast ballots in the coming election over the Internet.

The Pentagon will scrap the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE) until the current system can guarantee the security of the voting process or a new system is designed, a Defense Department spokesperson said.

"The action was taken in view of the inability to ensure the legitimacy of the votes cast," the spokesperson said.

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The decision follows a January report by four experts--three computer science professors and a former IBM researcher--that . The report argues that creating an e-voting system that guarantees each person votes once and protects the voter's identity is impossible with the current state of the Internet.

The system would have allowed absentee military voters from 50 counties in seven states the ability to place their votes. The inauguration was to have been in South Carolina's presidential primary on Tuesday. The Defense Department is searching for a program that can eventually handle the nearly 6 million American military personnel and civilians abroad.